The 333 Best Pop Songs of the 2000s: #121

#121: "Choctaw Bingo" (2002) - James McMurtry

After my massacre of the Spanish language yesterday, I decided to lend today's narrative to one of the best songwriters working today, James McMurtry. Son of the famous novelist "Lonesome Dove" Larry, McMurtry has been playing Texas rock n' country n' folk for twenty years now. He's often hailed for his powerful political protest songs, but I find that he's much better at storytelling than he is at polemics.

McMurtry has about a dozen superb story-songs, but this one's my favorite, and it's the funniest, and as most any low-to-middle class folk from the South can attest, this one contains whole heaping trunkfuls of truth, as McMurtry takes us on an intrastate trip with family and kids in tow. He's also backed by the best music of his career, as his band boogies and shakes and rumbles and syncopates some of the meanest Texas snakeskin rock and roll of the past ten years. If Bob Dylan and the Band would have all been from Texas, this might be what Blonde on Blonde and Music from Big Pink would have sounded like. Lyrics, too. They're as detailed and direct and descriptive and funny as anything Dylan ever wrote.

"Choctaw Bingo" is the best road song of the decade, and it's length--eight minutes and thirty-three seconds--is needed, 'cause when you've got to visit a relative who's cooking crystal meth because his moonshine doesn't sell well anymore, then you know you're in for the long haul, and it's time to strap those kids in, give 'em a little bit of vodka to calm 'em down, and blast some James McMurtry 'cause it'll be one great big ol' party like you never saw.